Philosophy in the Age of AI: The Usefulness of the Useless

A friend of mine shared his philosophy with me recently. He can't write a single line of code.

Yet he spent two days using Manus to build a website that infers geographic locations from photos — think detective-style reasoning, like Conan deducing where a picture was taken — complete with a login system and everything.

It's made me increasingly convinced that 纯想 and Don are people who truly understand philosophy. And it's precisely because of that understanding — that so-called "useless" philosophical thinking — that they're doing so well right now.

Two examples:

1. The Tao That Can Be Spoken Is Not the Eternal Tao

Any truth that can be fully articulated is not an absolute truth. The same holds in the age of AI: the most valuable things are often those that resist simple definition.

2. The Usefulness of the Useless

It's the seemingly impractical act of philosophical reflection that lies at the root of genuine creativity.

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Author: Jason Zhu | Original post